Thursday, March 28, 2013

2. In our continuing conversation about "recontextualizing" images, and making transformative works – an idea that will be crucial to our next project, a "found footage" remix video – your other homework for Tuesday is to read the linked article below, and write a response:

The article deals with Lichtenstein's pop-art appropriation of comics panels, as well as contemporary artist Erro's use of current comics imagery. The article is very much about the tension between the appropriated artist and the appropriating artist.

In a written and printed out response, I'd like you to answer the following questions:

1. List the number of changes Lichtenstein made from the Irv Novick panel he used as a basis for WHAAM!

2. Do you think those changes improved the original image? Do you think they are genuinely transformative changes?

3. Do you think Lichtenstein's WHAM! painting has a genuinely ironic relationship to the Novick source? Why or why not?

4. List the number of changes Dave Gibbons made from the WHAAM! painting to create his response, WHAAT? Do you think they are genuinely transformative changes?

5. What do you think of Erro's appropriation of Brian Bolland's imagery? Do you think his choice to omit Bolland's signature is a damning one?

6. How much of the tension between the cartooning artists and gallery artists described in the article comes from the differences in economic scale between those two worlds? (By "economic scale" I mean the monetary difference each type of artwork – comics pages versus gallery paintings – commands in the marketplace)